Discuss the significance of youth-centric, civil-society-partnered models like the Nasha Mukt Yuva Abhiyan in addressing substance abuse in India, as compared to state-led enforcement approaches.

The AIIMS-NDDTC national survey estimated about 16 crore alcohol users and around 60 lakh persons with opioid use disorders in India [3] — a demand-side crisis that policing alone cannot contain. The Nasha Mukt Yuva for Viksit Bharat Sankalp Abhiyan, a 100-week MY Bharat campaign linking over one crore youth across 28,000+ locations [1], therefore marks a necessary shift from interdiction to community-led prevention, though it cannot substitute for enforcement or treatment.

Significance of the youth–civil society model

• Reaches where the state cannot: addiction is sustained in families and peer groups; 120+ spiritual and socio-cultural organisations under the Kashi Declaration's five-year roadmap carry trust that officials lack [2].
• Cost-effective scale: volunteer cadres such as NMBA's Master Volunteers and 28,000+ Nasha Mukti Mitr deliver last-mile outreach at low fiscal cost [4].
• Destigmatises help-seeking, treating the user as patient rather than offender — the constitutional spirit of Article 47's duty to improve public health.
• Harnesses the demographic dividend, converting youth from a vulnerable group into change agents.

Limits compared with state-led enforcement

• Enforcement under the NDPS Act, 1985 and the NCB remains indispensable for supply interdiction, trafficking networks and border routes — tasks no NGO can perform.
• Awareness outpaces care: NMBA has sensitised crores but treated about 27.76 lakh persons through 730+ centres [4]; without referral into NAPDDR-funded IRCAs and district de-addiction centres, pledges do not become recovery [5].
• Voluntary delivery is uneven and unaccountable where partner organisations are absent.
• Episodic Sunday events are weaker than WHO's evidence-backed model of repeated school-based life-skills education [6].

The two approaches are complementary, not competing: enforcement compresses supply while youth-led mobilisation shrinks demand. Their effectiveness will depend on mapping every campaign site to a functioning treatment centre, embedding life-skills modules in schools, and concentrating effort in high-burden states. Anchored thus, the Abhiyaan can translate a drug-free pledge into the healthy human capital that Viksit Bharat @2047 presupposes.